Better all the time

A recent trend in popular science writing can be described, with only a little injustice, as secularized systematic theology. Impressed by the sheer scope of the sciences and their potential for helping us understand ourselves, writers such as Robert Wright use science to make claims not only about the nature of the world, but also about the human condition. Somewhere, usually toward the end of the work, God inevitably makes an appearance, albeit stripped of the more robust trappings of religious faith.